With Egypt's election, the Arab summer is getting hotter

On June 16-17 Egyptians will be cast ballots in a runoff election that will decide between the Muslim Brotherhood’s candidate Mohamed Mursi and former Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq, who served under former president Hosni Mubarak.

The ballot has polarized the country, prompting calls for boycotting the vote, while at the same time, Judge Ahmed el-Zend, the head of the association of Egyptian Judges said that would abandon any neutrality in this runoff and play a political role in the ballot watching and counting in order to prevent the Muslim Brotherhood from claiming unchallengeable power. “We won’t leave matters for those who can’t manage them…,” Judge Zend said.

Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi the Chairman of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), the de facto ruler of Egypt, convened a meeting on June 11 with the military council to discuss procedures to secure the presidential runoff election to ward off potential politicizing at the polls. They discussed the procedures to ensure the success, fairness and transparency of the voting process.

Nazly Hussein, a human rights advocate, had said, "People once thought that the presidential elections would be the key to stability and change.” He was reflecting the fear that the choice between a Mubarak holdover and a Brotherhood majority is not a choice for the advancement and growth of Egypt. Mona Ammar, a protester on Tahrir Square, expressed the common theme that. “It does not make sense to choose between two wrongs.”

Meanwhile, on June 14th, just two days before the runoff election, Egypt’s Supreme Constitutional Court will begin considering whether Ahmed Shafiq, Mubarak’s last prime minister and one of the two finalists in the election, should be able to run at all. The court will determine the constitutionality of the so-called “political law of isolation,” passed by the Islamist-dominated parliament, which bans former senior Mubarak allies from participating in politics for the next five years.

Additionally, also in advance of the runoff, Egypt is under pressure to develop a new constitution that expected to define the president's powers and the rights of its citizen. Politics and fear have delayed the picking the panel, and now Egypt’s military council tried to impose a deadline to agree on the make-up of the new constitution-drafting assembly.

To allay concerns of an Islamist led government, and in support of Mr. Mursi’s candidacy the Muslim Brotherhood and fellow Islamists which control about 70 percent of Egypt’s parliament claims that under its leadership, Egypt’s constitutional assembly will be represented by a diverse group, including women, Coptic Christians and secular leaders of the revolt that overthrew the former government.

However, that deal is not likely to appease those who fear an Islamic dominated Egypt. Egypt’s largest news organization, Al Ahram, published a column by a retired general, HussamSeilam, who wrote that if the Brotherhood came to power, Egypt would resemble Iran.

Pressure is rising on the military council that assumed command of the country after Mubarak was toppled because it promised to hand over to a newly elected president by July 1 and so far it is unclear just what authority the new president will have.

This past Monday, liberal and leftist political parties vacated their seats in the constitutional assembly in protest at what they called the over-representation of Islamists in the body. They challenged the two Islamist parties, the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party, and the SalafistAl-Nour Party of filling all 50 seats designated for Islamists, so that the smaller Islamist parties were vying for the seats meant for representatives of the secular parties and civil society institutions. They called the move a ruse that they would not fall for.

Ultimately, deep divisions and a climate of uncertainty threaten political stability as the runoff dates approach. Egyptians are tasked with electing a president whose powers are still undetermined, and their choices appear to be truly one of the lesser of two evils; what determines the evil also depends on where one stands.
Any political progress that may have been made last week on the constitution-drafting body was reversed after more parliamentary infighting as secular lawmakers had walked out of a meeting called to name the representatives who would draft the new constitution. At the same time, the legality of the parliament itself is in question and the courts might determine that it should be dissolved this week.

And although Egypt’s Presidential Election Committee granted Shafiq an exception, allowing him to remain in the race given the Brotherhood’s “isolation law,” the court will also rule on the legality of Shafiq’s candidacy.

Some see these problems rising as a sign that the SCAF is vying to be remain the real only power in control. There are suggestions that the SCAF has been working hard at keeping the situation unpredictable until the last minute to pressure either candidate for guarantees of the military’s power.

Middle East political analyst SanaSaeed told believes that the SCAF remains in power and has created chaos “to distract from that.”

For Israel, the only real democracy in the Middle East, one thing is clear; the Arab summer is just beginning and with the death toll rising in Syria and the confusion in Egypt, the region will only get hotter. Israel needs to watch closely and stay cool.

JudaEngelmayer is a senior vice president of the New York public relations agency, 5WPR.